South to Queenstown

Too many photos but we just can't decide which to delete!

4th April
We woke to rain and it rained on and off all day, this area has really high rainfall but also as many sunshine hours as the wine growing region around Blenheim; when it rains it really rains! We wanted to make sure we got to the National Kiwi centre in the centre of town by 10am for the Eel Feeding but when we arrived at about 9:30am the place was closed. It took us some time to realise that infact the clocks went back 1 hour last night - Daylight savings! Anyway, we got into the centre at the real 9am about half an hour later and wandered around seeing enormous eels, frogs, Tuatara, native birds and fish, and of course the Kiwi in the darkened pen doing his/her hunting poking his long beak and nostrils into the earth and rotten stumps. He/She seemed to be expending so much energy for no payback at all. At 10am Tristan and I took part in the eel feeding holding strips of Ox heart in tongs infront of the eels faces and they sucked it in like spaghetti! Then we headed south again through the rain towards the glacier region of Franz Joseph. We made one stop on the way at Pukepukara (or something lke that, I can't find it on any maps; maybe officialdom have decided to ignore it!), the smallest town in New Zealand with 2 inhabitants; a married couple who are not only the mayor and mayoress but also run the local cafe, shop and pub, as well as a small holding with deer and goats; a possum trapping business and the local bank. They have the honour of being the most politically incorrect place in New Zealand.
A sign displays the current exchange rates for foreign currencies. Britain has been having it too good for too long so they didn't want to offer a good rate, £3 for $1NZ, they wouldn't exchange Canadian dollars because 'one of us usedto be married to one of the buggers', Americans could get a 1:1 exchange and they would exchange Japanese Yen becuase their 'kids used the silly notes with too many 000s for monopoly money'!
The shop sold many locally crafted goods, many made from Possum fur, and there was a huge variety of cards on sale, each of which really made us giggle... they are difficult to describe but to give you an idea one of them is of an old couple sitting on a sofa, the man has his hand down the neck of the woman's shirt and she is saying 'Don't be daft Bill, they're not up there any more!' Near the cash register was a sign with the message 'Yes it is raining, this is a rain forest. You chose to take your holiday here. Don't ask us what the weather is going to do, you are on holiday and have time to read the weather reports and listen to the radio, we are working.' Another sign stated that 'Unattended children will be sold into slavery', and so the giggles continued. We donated $4 to a fund for stopping the use of poison in the area in return for a possum pie, they had had to stop selling the pies because the government told them they couldn't sell possum meat unless it was sourced from a government approved institution; since not one of these exists they were having to bend the rules a bit! (By the way possum tastes a bit like chicken to me but Celso disagrees and said it was just gamey!)
Then on down to Franz Joseph, a town with the same name as the local glacier, one of the most accessible glaciers in the world, its terminal face at only 250m above sea level and ends in rain forest. We went into town and booked a hike for tomorrow afternoon before finding a campsite and relaxing.

5th April.
We had a good long lie in in the morning and then drove up the valley a bit to the glacier terminal face car park and climbing up a hill to get a good look over the glacier. The Maori story is that there was an adventurous girl called Hine Hukatere who loved mountaineering but her lover, Tawe, was not so keen. Hine persuaded Hukatere to climb the mountain with her but he slipped and fell to his death. Hine's tears were so many that they flooded the valley and the Gods froze them as a memorial to her grief.
There were some great photos showing the glacier in the past. In the 1750s the glacier was about 300m higher at the face and the face was a further kilometre down the valley. So it has receded a massive amount; however, in the 1980's the glacier was even smaller and has been advancing ever since. At the moment it is pretty much stationary with as much melting each year from the face, for the last couple of years, as it gains in snow fall at the top. We returned to the town at 1:45pm for our hike to find that it had been cancelled due to cloud cover high in the valley. You see, we were going on a helihike and though the lower parts of the glacier looked quite clear the upper part where the helicopters land was covered in low cloud.
Nothing for it but to book for tomorrow and we went to have a long soak in the glacier hot pools. At this place they take the glacier melt water and heat it and put it into three shallow but fairly large pools set amongst rainforest. The first pool is 36, the second 38 and the third 40 degrees. We spent ages in the first two but the third was just too hot for me and Tris, Celso lasted a little bit longer. Anyway it was great and soothed away any aches that remained from our battles with the quadbikes a couple of days ago. We soaked until after dark and emerged pruny and sleepy.

6th April
We spent the morning looking round all the shops in town which are full of good NZ tourist fare -great fun. At 11:15am we were again informed that our hike had been cancelled but that we could book for 1:45pm. SO... we did (book for 1:45) and then went off back to the terminal face, this time to walk right up to the face through the valley filled with stones that have been dumped in the past and all the water flowing out from under the ice. The valley is really impressive and the terminal face completely awesome, you just can't imagine just how huge it is until you get up close to it and then look up and see the tiny specs of people up on the lower slopes (they were doing walking in hikes which were still going ahead). There are fantastic waterfalls down both edges of the valley and in some places the rocks at the edges are smooth and stripey since the sedimentary layers were turned through 90 degrees and now sit vertically. Back to town again to yet again be told that our trip was cancelled.... so that was it, we gave up on the helihike and decided to head south. 23km further south we arrived at Fox Glacier and just in case we went in to a hiking office to see if a helihike was available... and it was, one leaving in half an hour.
I can't explain what a thrilling 3 hours we had. First the helicopter ride, so much smoother than in a small plane except when the pilot decides to do a sharp turn and dive as he did over a waterfall at the edge of the glacier, that bit was a bit like a rollercoaster, stomach in mouth kind of feeling - what a rush (after a bit of a scream!). Then down onto the ice, and being the end of the day and only 6 people on our trip, we found that we were alone on the ice, not another person in sight - silence, except for the dripping of water and the tramping of our feet as crampons crushed ice. Spectacular scenery on all sides; the clouds hanging over the head of the valley; the sun setting between mountains out over the Tasman sea; the changing colours of the ice as the sun flickered in and out of the clouds; the formations in the ice, compression arches, fissures, holes filled with sparkling clear water. It was cold but it was fresh, it was just amazing. Our guide Geoff (from Texas) lead us over the ice, up the glacier. We were on a part of the glacier that was over 300m thick and it was a part that was inbetween a fast moving, steep, upper section and a practically stationary, horizontal lower section so the pressure of the ice coming down was forcing the lower ice up into these amazing arches and gulleys - compression arches. It had been hailing about an hour earlier and lots of hail was still lying around in the water pools, it looked like small polystyrene balls. Geoff set up a safety line and cut ice steps with his axe so that we could walk through a gulley of sculpted ice, with curvey sides, windows and a stream running through the centre. Just fantastic. As we walked back down to where the helicopter would come in to pick us up the sun was setting and the sky was going red, then back in the chopper and down over the lower end of the glacier and back into the valley over fern tree forests and a winding river.
Geoff had told us that if we drove West towards the beach we would have fantastic views of the glacier and the mountains in the morning, so we did... and we did (the next morning). Great views of the Fox Glacier,and to its right (south) the Tasman and Cook (tallest in NZ) mountain peaks.
Haven't been able to get the smile off my face, that Helihike was just incredible.

7th
After our fantastic sunrise we drove back into Fox and had a rather too large fry up breakfast in a cafe. Then a 350km drive south to Queenstown with just a few stops on the way. First Bruce bay where I built a stone pile amongst hundreds of others at the beaches edge. Then Knights point, looking out over the Tasman Sea over crashing rocks. A fantastic veiw up the Haast River valley to Mount Hooker, views across Lake Wanaka and then Lake Hawea (a lake in an old glacial valley). Then we stopped in Wanaka (the town) to go to Puzzle world with illusion rooms and a giant maze. Tris and I made it through the maze but Celso gave up and returned to eat pie and try one of the puzzle games that were all around the tables in the cafe. He then went to the toilet with several Romans, and even shared a sponge!
When we arrived in Quuenstown we made our way to the agreed pick up spot for our new wheel just before closing at 5pm. But ofcourse the wheel wasn't there and neither the guy working there nor his head office knew anything about the special delivery that should have been there waiting for us. So the saga of the wheel continues. But I'm still smiling about the Helihike!